


A Good Start

by readbetweenthelions



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-14
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 03:51:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readbetweenthelions/pseuds/readbetweenthelions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce Banner and Tony Stark get to know each other in the aftermath of their first battle as The Avengers - and discover that there might be something there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Tony Stark is a man who likes to be nude.

It simply comes with the territory. He is handsome, well-built, and extremely confident. Tony sees his own nudity as a gift to the universe. As Tony likes to say: he looks good in a suit, but he looks even better in his birthday suit.

Tony paces his penthouse in the Avengers Tower (formerly known as Stark Tower, but Tony is willing to make a sacrifice or two, take one for the team, as it were) sans clothing. After all, no one can see him up here, anyway. He is high above Manhattan, and Tony had specified that there were to be no cameras in his penthouse (and it had been almost no job at all to deactivate the ones S.H.I.E.L.D. had put in anyway.)

“JARVIS, will you have someone bring me my breakfast? I can’t be bothered with cooking today. Too much to do,” Tony says airily as he saunters towards the bar. He pours himself a glass of scotch – never too early in the morning for a nice scotch – and breathes in the rich smell of the alcohol before downing the whole thing.

“Yes, sir,” responds the mechanical voice of JARVIS. “Eggs, sausage, and toast with raspberry jam, sir?”

“No, let’s spice it up today, JARVIS,” Tony says, pouring himself another scotch. “Orange marmalade with the toast.”

“Orange marmalade it is, sir.”

Tony hadn’t really been truthful when he said there was too much to do today. In fact it was the first day in a while that he hadn’t had much to do at all. The suit was running well, the arc reactor was powering the Tower efficiently, and no signs of alien invasion in days. The Tower had been repaired – Tony had paid a lot of money for that to be done in half the time it normally would have been – and all was quiet on the Western front.

For a brief second Tony considers putting on a pair of boxers, maybe, or a robe – but then laughs at himself for even allowing the thought to cross his mind.

* * *

Bruce Banner is _not_ a man who likes to be nude.

Clothing, for Bruce, is a curtain that obscures his true self, a veneer that keeps him hidden. It’s poetic, really. He needs to be covered in every way so that he can keep the Other Guy at bay. One chink in his metaphorical armor and his job becomes much more difficult.

Besides, it has always been Bruce’s belief that the right clothes endear you to people; and God knows Bruce could use some endearing.

Bruce is on his way up to Tony’s penthouse. Tony had his intercom switched off, as usual, so Bruce’s attempts to reach him had failed. The bastard even had his phone off. Bruce needs his help with a bit of technology, a sort of modified Geiger counter that would… well, never mind what it should be able to do, the problem is that it just isn’t working. Usually Bruce has a pretty good handle on this sort of thing, but he’s no electrical wizard like the famous Tony Stark.

Bruce looks around at the interior of Tony’s private elevator. It’s the only elevator in the building that went up to the penthouse, so Bruce _has_ to use it, even though Tony had said (multiple times, and very emphatically) that no one was to use his elevator without his prior consent. Tony wouldn’t mind, Bruce is sure. Besides, it’s near eleven-thirty in the morning, Tony must be awake by now.

The elevator slides silently into position, and the doors open with a slight whir to reveal Tony’s penthouse.

Bruce had seen the penthouse only a few times before – once during the battle with the Chitauri, though Bruce had been… the Other Guy, at that point, and then again on the tour Tony had given Bruce and the rest of the team before they moved into the Tower. The elegance is breathtaking each time.

“Tony?” Bruce calls, glancing around the penthouse. He catches sight of Tony just as he does so. Tony is standing in front of the windows, facing them, with a glass of scotch in his left hand; and he’s not wearing anything.

Tony’s head whips around, and Bruce registers just a bit of surprise on the normally unflappable face of Tony Stark before Tony masters his emotions and Bruce averts his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Tony, I didn’t realize you were – I’ll just – sorry for using your elevator – I – ” he backs towards the elevator nervously. Well it was Tony’s fault he kept his intercom off, if Bruce had been able to contact Tony things like this wouldn’t _happen –_

“No, no, Banner, stay there, don’t worry about it,” says Tony, reaching for a pair of jeans that are laying on the arm of a huge, gracefully-curving couch, taking care to leave his front facing away from Bruce. “Let me just – I’ll be there in a second.” Tony pulls the jeans on, and Bruce tries to keep his eyes averted, but doesn’t quite manage it.

Tony sniffs and turns to face Bruce. “Well, now that I’m decent, what is it you need, Banner?”

“Well, you know, it’s your fault you keep your intercom off, if I’d been able to contact you things like this wouldn’t _happen –_ ” Bruce stammers, juggling the device between his hands, which are suddenly and inexplicably clammy.

“Yeah, I’m never gonna turn that thing on,” says Tony dismissively, making a sweeping motion with the scotch glass but miraculously not spilling a single drop. “I can’t have people calling me on it, at all hours of the morning, disturbing my beauty sleep. That goes for my phone, too. You want a drink, Banner? I’ve got a really nice scotch you might be interested in…”

“I don’t drink alcohol, Tony. It lowers your inhibitions and I don’t think we want me losing my inhibitions.” Bruce toys with the idea of telling Tony to just forget it. He can always come back another time, when Tony is wearing more clothing…

Tony diverts his course from the bar so that he’s walking straight towards Bruce. “Fine, but you’re gonna have to loosen up sometime, Doc. So, you’ve gotta be here for a reason, so what is it?”

Bruce shifts his weight from one foot to the other and clutches the device in one hand. He keeps his eyes down, trying not to stare at the arc reactor buried in scar tissue in the center of Tony’s chest.

“I need your help with something. I just… I can’t get this thing to work,” Bruce says softly.

“What _thing_ are we talking about here? I’m a genius, Brucey, not a mind reader.”

Bruce holds the small gadget out to Tony. Tony plucks it nimbly out of Bruce’s hands and squints at it. “It’s… it’s sort of like a… modified Geiger counter, I guess. But I can’t get it to work just right. I’m an atomic physicist, not an electrician.”

“Well, you know, I’m not exactly an ‘electrician’ myself,” Tony smirks as he examines the little machine from all angles. He blows forcefully into the sensor, and Bruce flinches slightly, knowing how sensitive the device is (or should be.)

“Oh. Um. I’m sorry Tony, that was the wrong choice of words, I didn’t mean – ” Bruce splutters nervously. It’s hard coming into Tony’s penthouse, Bruce thinks. It’s like walking into a lion’s den – one gets the feeling they’re disturbing the King and any moment he’ll just clamp his jaws onto your throat and –

“No, no, it’s okay, don’t apologize,” says Tony flippantly. “I’ll take a look at your little… thing – now, what are you calling this little gizmo? I can’t just be walking around here referring to it as Banner’s _Thing_ – people will get ideas.”

“I don’t know, I haven’t been _calling_ it anything. _You_ name it.”

“On second thought, ‘Bruce’s Thing’ is kind of catchy. I think I’ll keep it. So what seems to be the problem?”

“It just isn’t detecting what it’s meant to detect. I might have hooked up the sensors wrong, done some bad soldering, I don’t know – ”

“Well, what’s it meant to detect?”

“It uh… well it’s meant to be worn close to the body so it can measure vitals and it ought to work something like a Geiger counter and measure radiation…”

“Sure. No questions asked, Bruce. You know, you should have JARVIS run a diagnostic on it. Like this: JARVIS! Run a full diagnostic on Banner’s Thing – check for faulty wiring, mis-wired connections, and general malfunctions. I’ll take it from there. JARVIS can do a lot of things for you, if you ask him.”

“Thanks, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to get used to an artificial butler doing all my work for me.”

Tony gasps in faux-outrage. “JARVIS isn’t an artificial butler! He’s an artificial _intelligence_ – very different.” Tony turns and walks back towards the windows that face the terrace. Bruce watches him as he walks, noticing the way the beltless jeans hang low on Tony’s angular hips, and the way his smooth, relaxed shoulders slope…

Bruce tears his attention away from Tony’s body and folds his hands behind his back. He often didn’t know what to do with his limbs in situations like this. Bruce is not a man who uses a lot of extraneous motion, in stark contrast to the expansively-gesturing and constantly-moving Tony. Bruce attempts to be as unobtrusive as possible. After all, Tony is obtrusive enough for the both of them. Tony Stark is the textbook definition of obtrusive. But obtrusive fits some people and it doesn’t fit others.

“Sure you don’t want that drink, Bruce? Never too early for a good scotch,” Tony says, taking a sip of his own drink. Tony’s words jerk Bruce out of his thoughts with a little start.

“No, I’m sure I don’t want it. Can I… Should I go and come back in a little while, or…?” Bruce takes a step backwards towards the elevator.

“No, stay!” Tony says, smirking good-naturedly. “I haven’t seen much of you lately – you’ve been locking that brilliant mind away in the laboratory. You ought to let me come work with you on something sometime – or you can come work with me.”

Bruce isn’t used to compliments like this. He is mostly used to criticism, or conflict and the avoidance thereof. No one wants to set off the Other Guy. He hopes he isn’t blushing, because he feels a familiar hotness in his face.

“Nice to see a little color on you for once,” Tony quips. Damn, he had noticed. Bruce should have known – not even the slightest discomfort could escape the eagle eye of Tony Stark. “Well, you know, color that isn’t green.”

Bruce wouldn’t tolerate that sort of taunt from anyone else, really, but in Tony’s mouth that kind of thing sounded almost like a pet name, a meaningless and obligatory endearment.

“Sir, I have performed the diagnostic tests and found no faults in the wiring or any general malfunctions,” JARVIS intones, “If the device still does not function, I suggest hands-on repair.”

“Thank you JARVIS,” says Tony as the harmless lasers that were scanning the device disappear. Tony turns to Bruce. “I’ll fix your Thing for you, don’t worry. You’re clearly uncomfortable in the presence of such splendor, so I’ll let you go back to your lab, and do your own thing.”

“My room is furnished at least well as yours,” Bruce objects. “You insisted on it.”

“I wasn’t talking about the furniture,” says Tony, with eyebrows raised. “Come on now, you ought to rest – whatever you’ve been working on, it can wait until I fix your gizmo, can’t it?” He places a hand on Bruce’s shoulder and turns him, guiding him with a light touch towards the elevator. Bruce isn’t sure why he’s letting Tony do this, but he doesn’t really know what else to do.

“Oh, and Bruce? If you wanted to see me naked, you only had to ask.”

With that Tony ushers him into the elevator before Bruce has the chance to protest, and as Bruce spins around he thinks he sees Tony wink just before the doors of the elevator close and take Bruce back down to the level of his apartment.

* * *

Tony likes spending time with Bruce Banner. There’s something very intriguing about him. He’s quiet, for one thing. You didn’t exactly meet a lot of superheroes who don’t have a thing for attention. It’s just that he looks so unsure of himself, all the time. After all, doesn’t he _know_ whether or not he has his ‘little problem’ under control? Isn’t Bruce Banner the world’s foremost expert on controlling the Hulk? So, what’s wrong with a little confidence in his abilities? After all, Tony’s so confident he practically _is_ confidence – and it’s worked out great for him.

Tony will fix Bruce’s little gizmo. The doc is smart, but he’s right about electronics not being his forte. The thing would never hold up if he Hulked out wearing it – and he assumes that Bruce is planning on wearing it. Monitoring vitals and radiation, puh-lease – why didn’t he just say it? He wants to give the team a warning system. To let them get out of the way in time.

And Tony can understand why. Though they’d saved the world together, the rest of the team was still tiptoeing around him like he’s an unstable chemical reaction. But not Tony – no. He knows Bruce has a lid on it. He knows what he has to do. Yet he’s petrified – _petrified_ – of losing control. So there’s no way this device is for _research._

Well, Tony will take the device, and he will improve it. He turns the little device in his hands (it’s sort of ugly, a plastic sort of cube with an outdated readout and a terrible speaker, with odd bits and bobs poking out of it) then throws it in the garbage. Bruce doesn’t need that terrible thing. Tony will make him something much better. He’ll give him exactly what he needs, but is afraid to ask for.

* * *

Bruce is just finishing positioning his laser. _Just a little tweak to the left and it will be –_

“Bruce!” hollers Tony’s slightly mechanized voice from the intercom on the wall behind Bruce, shattering the cloying silence that had so blissfully pervaded Bruce’s lab. There is loud rock and roll playing on Tony’s side of the intercom, and the sound of Tony throwing tools onto something metallic. Bruce struggles to contain a shout of frustration – he had been so startled by Tony’s sudden intrusion that it had completely thrown off the alignment of the laser. “You busy?”

“Well, I was,” says Bruce, straightening and turning towards the intercom, “But obviously you have something more important for me to be doing?”

“Yeah, I fixed your Thing. Come up! This time I give you permission to use the elevator. Just know that this morning’s incident is what I call _Strike One._ ” And with that Tony switches off the intercom and a wave of blessed silence washes over Bruce once again. Sighing, Bruce pulls off his gloves and unties his lead apron, giving his laser one last melancholy glance before heading upstairs to see Tony’s work on the gadget.

Bruce steels his nerves as he rides the elevator up to the penthouse. Stark is sure to be in rare form, now that he is prepared for Bruce’s arrival and not about to be caught off-guard. Not to mention the fact that Tony will undoubtedly have something spectacular prepared for him in addition to the taunts that will definitely be thrown his way.

Sure enough, Tony is strutting through the penthouse – fully clothed this time. He nods in Bruce’s direction to acknowledge him, and then diverts his course and walks straight towards Bruce.

“It’s easy to see why you, Brucey, are not an entrepreneur,” he says airily. “That Thing was, not to put too fine a point on it, _exceedingly_ ugly – it would never have sold! Now – ”

“It wasn’t meant to sell.”

“I know, I know, figure of speech. Well anyway I scrapped your design – ” Tony watches with suppressed glee as Bruce frowns and crossed his arms, “ – and I went in a new direction. Say hello… to _this._ ”

Tony holds between his thumb and forefinger what looks like a pill.

“Tony, what is _that?_ ” Bruce groans. “And did you really just throw the Thing – my device, I mean – away? I thought you said you fixed it.”

“Of course I threw it away, it was hideous and it wouldn’t have worked for what you wanted it to work for anyway.” Tony ignores Bruce’s protests as he goes on explaining. “And this is fixing it. This is a microchip – you know, like the things they put in cats and dogs. Don’t worry, it’s not a GPS or anything. It just monitors your vital signs – heart rate, blood pressure, core body temperature, hydration level, blood sugar level, white blood cell count, static charge, and a couple other cool little things. _And_ it tracks gamma radiation subcutaneously and in the environment. And it broadcasts all that information to this rather, if I do say so myself, _stylish_ wristwatch. And when one or more of your vital levels starts to get a little high, or low, it’ll start to beep. I assume that’s what you wanted?”

Once again, Bruce is speechless. It’s _exactly_ what he’d wanted. He isn’t even mad about Tony throwing out the Thing – it had probably deserved it. It wasn’t nearly so elegant as this. _Play it cool, Banner…_

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I wanted.”

“Of course all we have to do to implant it is just stick a big old needle under your skin and implant it right next to your heart,” says Tony, tossing the microchip up in the air, then catching it and pocketing it. He makes an expansive gesture with his hands. “No worries, right?”

A needle? Bruce doesn’t do well with needles. Well, Bruce does alright with needles, but the Other Guy… that’s a different story. As he surfaced from his internal thoughts, he noticed Tony coming closer to him.

“Yep, a big needle,” Tony says, “Right here.” He pokes a finger lightly into Bruce’s chest just above his heart. “Maybe it’ll leave a scar and we can be twinsies.” He’s beaming like a madman, an unfairly charismatic madman. He has an almost preternaturally endearing smile. Bruce wonders if it was naturally like that, or if all that Stark Industries cash had paid for the best orthodontics and tooth whitening money could buy. Probably also a very expensive toothpaste – Tony’s breath smells minty fresh.

And just like that the moment is over, and Tony is pacing back towards the bar, strutting like a peacock in the knowledge that he has exceeded Bruce’s expectations. “We can find a doctor somewhere who will do it. A medical doctor I mean.”

“I got that.”

“One more chance for a drink, Banner.”

“Again, I’ll pass.”

“Have it your way, Banner. Hey, you wanna go out for lunch? There’s a place that just opened up, apparently they sell something spelled P, H, O. How do you pronounce that? Is it Foh? Fow? I just don’t know, but we should try it.”

“I think you pronounce it fuh. And I was sort of in the middle of an experiment…”

“Bruce, you’re _always_ in the middle of an experiment. Who says you can’t take a pho break?”

“Well, I guess…”

“It’s settled, then! Pho!”

“Should we um, call the rest of the team?”

“No, no, just you and me this time. I’m sure they’re busy.”

“Tony, _I_ was busy.”

Tony ignores him and disappears into his room to grab his credit card.

It seems like moments later that Bruce and Tony are driving down the streets of Manhattan in one of Tony’s many convertibles.

“You know, it’s nice living in Stark Tower,” Bruce said. “My floor is quiet. Private.”

“ _Avengers_ Tower. And that was the point.”

“It’s just... I’m worried that I’ll… you know… and ruin everything. I don’t know if I – ”

“Don’t you dare say you want to leave,” says Tony, not taking his eyes off the road. “You don’t have to punish yourself, you know. You can let yourself be happy.”

“Yeah,” Bruce says noncommittally. He doesn’t quite believe that – can’t quite believe that. Happiness, for Bruce, still means letting his guard down, and that can’t happen.

“You know,” Tony says after a while, keeping his eyes locked on the road, “It’s been nice, having you around. Even though you shut yourself up in that lab. It’s nice to have someone who’s, you know, on the same level as me, intellectually. It’s rare – _very_ rare – that I find someone like you. I think you’re the first real friend I’ve had in a long time.”

“Thanks,” says Bruce, studying Tony’s face. Bruce has to admit, it _is_ nice – to actually have a friend, for once.

* * *

 _Bruce Banner._ Tony stares up at his ceiling, lying (in the nude, predictably) on his back on his enormous bed. Bruce Banner is an enigma. He fascinates Tony. He can’t get Bruce off his mind. He certainly has a handsome face. He could be so attractive with a little confidence. As of right now he is all sort of... hunched over, like he needs to protect himself from something. Cowering. But he shouldn’t have to.

Tony sits straight up in bed. _I wonder what Bruce is up to right now?_ He hops out of bed and makes it almost to the elevator before he remembers to go back and put some clothes on.

“JARVIS, locate Bruce Banner,” Tony calls to the artificial butler as he pulls on a pair of boxers.

“Bruce Banner is in his laboratory on Floor 33, sir,” responds JARVIS after a few moments.

“Thank you, JARVIS,” says Tony as he rushes into the elevator.

Tony stands outside the door of Bruce’s lab. It _is_ Bruce’s lab – Tony had given it to him, along with any equipment Bruce asked for. Tony likes to spoil his friends, and he can afford it. He’d given apartments to the rest of the team, but Bruce got a state-of-the-art laboratory as well. And now Tony stands at the door of this private lab, his hand hovering over the keypad next to the door. Each of the Avengers has a PIN number that lets them into their own apartments and a few shared spaces, but of course, Tony has an override PIN that lets him into any part of the Tower he likes. However, this was the first time he had hesitated to use this power. After all, this _is_ Bruce’s _private_ lab, and – oh, who is he kidding?

Tony taps out the PIN and the lab door slides open. A haggard-looking Bruce Banner is perched on a stool by a lab bench, hunched over and scribbling in his notebook. To Tony’s credit the door had slid open so silently that Bruce hadn’t even noticed Tony’s entrance.

Tony clears his throat, then calls softly, “Bruce?” Tony watches as Bruce’s shoulders twitch in surprise. Bruce spins around to face Tony. He’s wearing his glasses – reading glasses, probably, judging by the way he squints through them to see Tony. Bruce looks at his lap, then removes his glasses, and sighs.

“You aren’t properly dressed to be in a lab like this, you know,” says Bruce, referring to the outfit Tony is wearing – outfit in the loosest sense of the term, since it’s just a pair of boxers and a wife beater, not even any shoes.

“Right, sorry, Doctor Banner, let me fix that,” Tony says. He snatches Bruce’s lab coat from its hanger near the door, then strides over to Bruce and borrows his glasses.

“Hey, who am I?” Tony asks, putting the glasses on. “I’m a nuclear physicist with a severe case of workaholism. You work too much, Banner, you need to take a break.”

“Nuclear physicists who work too much typically wear shoes in the lab,” Bruce points out. “And anyway, I took breaks today. I saw you, twice, and you practically held me hostage and forced me to eat pho with you.”

“You liked it, don’t pretend you didn’t. It was delicious.”

This makes Bruce smile, and he gives a short laugh and looks at his feet. “Yeah, it was pretty good. So, uh. What brings you to my lab this late at night?”

“Well, I didn’t really have any ulterior motives, so I guess I’ll just help out with whatever you need.”

“Thanks, but I think I can handle it.”

“Come on, let me help. Please? I’ll be a good boy, I promise,” says Tony. He sticks out his lower lip in an over-the-top pout, but Bruce simply turns to his laser and ignores it. “Come on, I’ll adjust your laser for you.”

Bruce rubs an eye with the heel of his hand and sniffs. “I guess you can do that. It needs to be moved a quarter of a degree left and half a degree up.”

Tony strides to the laser and fiddles with the readout. After a few seconds he realizes the laser couldn’t be adjusted from the readout – it has to be done by hand. Bruce watches him fiddle with the readout for a couple more seconds and Tony sets about moving the laser with the knobs. He keeps overshooting it, and then overcorrecting. He attempts to cover his mistakes by talking – that usually works pretty well for him. “You know, I could design a little robot or something to adjust this for you. No more bending over these stupid dials.”

Bruce just grins and hops off his stool. He snatches his glasses off Tony’s face, and turns to the laser. In moments he has gently brushed Tony out of the way and adjusted the laser to the exact right position. “I don’t want a robot, Tony. Some things have to be done by hand.”

“Bruce Banner, making it all look easy,” teases Tony.

“Well, you’re one to talk,” retorts Bruce, “‘Bruce Banner makes it look easy,’ says Tony Stark, the smartest and most well-liked man in New York City – maybe even the whole country. Look at the pot calling the kettle black!”

“Well, I don’t know about most well-liked,” reasons Tony, “But smartest? Probably. You’re putting up a good fight, though, Brucey.”

“Please. If I was as smart as you say I am, I wouldn’t be – you know – in my position, would I?”

“Are you talking about the Hulk?” blurts Tony. He picks up a beaker of something from Bruce’s lab bench and sniffs it gingerly. He notes Bruce’s flinch when he heard the word – Hulk.

Bruce sighs deeply. “Yeah. I am. Didn’t anyone teach you not to smell strange beakers? What if the fumes from that burned your mucosal tissues, got into your lungs and poisoned you?”

“It’s coffee. Didn’t anyone teach _you_ not to drink out of laboratory glassware?”

“This isn’t a lesson in lab safety, Tony.” Bruce has that look on his face, the one that looked like he’d just tasted something sour, the one that meant he was straining.

“I’m pretty sure I’m not the one who started that. And if this isn’t a lesson in lab safety, then what is it?”

“Why don’t _you_ tell _me_ , Tony?” snaps Bruce. He shakes his head to clear it and takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m tired and I should probably go to bed and… well, I’m sorry.”

There is a heavy silence. “You know, you ought to stop apologizing so much,” Tony says coolly. “You can control it. I know you can. Why don’t _you_ know you can?”

“Because I can’t _always_ , Tony,” hisses Bruce. “It seems like I’ve got it covered but I _don’t_ , not _really_ , because there’s always a chance that my concentration might slip and someone might say or do the wrong thing and… people could die, Tony. People _have_ died. And I don’t want them to. I’ve killed people, Tony, and I can’t even remember doing it. You know, I’m just going to end up hurting us. The Avengers, I mean. Probably the whole world. I’m going to end up hurting _you_. All I do is destroy.”

“No, Bruce, you have done a _lot_ of good. You can’t always control yourself but you _always_ try to put it right afterwards. I know what it’s like, Bruce. I sold weapons for most of my career. And those weapons killed a lot of people. And now I’m trying to put it right. But that’s going to follow me forever, Bruce, no matter what I do. Just like the Other Guy is going to follow you. But that isn’t the point – the point is we have to put it behind us and try our best and _God damn it_ , you are _trying your best!_ Don’t pretend that you aren’t, because I can see you are. Everyone can see you are. You are _not _a bad man, Bruce Banner. In fact, you’re the best guy I know. So _what_ if there’s a part of you that you can’t quite control? I believe in you. We believe in you. So just… just, _stop,_ with the self-pity thing. Because you are strong, and you can _do this.__ ”_

Bruce is speechless. He stares at Tony for a short while, then sits back on the stool and puts his face in his hands. He grinds the heel of his palm into one of his eyes, for a moment, then looks back up at Tony.

“So, what do you say, Bruce?” Tony says, “Can you just let me be angry enough for the both of us?”

“Yeah,” Bruce says in a slightly strangled voice. He gulps back emotion that’s sticking in his throat and clouding his eyes. “Yeah, I think I can let you do that.”

“Good.”

A thick silence reigns. Tony isn’t one who’s much for silence – a major point in which he and Bruce differ – but he lets this one drag on for a while. Bruce needs it, so Tony gives it to him.

“Uh, Tony?” Bruce says after a while.

“Hmm?”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Tony closes the space between them, then reaches across Bruce and flipped the switch to shut the laser off. He puts an arm around Bruce’s shoulders and guides him off the stool. “Now. You should probably get to bed.” Bruce nods and Tony shakes him lightly, in a brothers-in-arms sort of way. Bruce flinches a little, but Tony can see the smile he doesn’t have the energy to wear trying to break through. The door to the lab closes and locks behind them, and Tony stops. Bruce turned to face him, his mouth open, ready to ask why he had stopped. Tony puts a hand on Bruce’s shoulder and stares into his eyes. Bruce blinks a lot, clearly uncomfortable with so much direct eye contact, but Bruce holds Tony’s gaze.

“Bruce, you can trust me,” Tony says softly. “You don’t have to do it all on your own. I’m here.”

Bruce’s mouth opens and closes a few times, trying to form words; nothing comes out, except, “Thanks.”

The two men part ways after a moment – Bruce in the direction of his apartment, Tony in the direction of his elevator.

Well, at least Tony might finally be able to get some sleep now; but he doubts it. Tony grins as he strips off his clothes, and the lab coat he had accidentally worn out of Bruce’s lab. His own clothes are thrown ungraciously towards the closet, but Bruce’s lab coat is draped lovingly over the pillow on the unused side of Tony’s bed. Tony is about to hop into his luxurious bed when a thought strikes him. He pads over to the wall opposite the bed and switches on the intercom. _Just in case,_ he thinks, and clambers into bed.

* * *

It is worthless.

Bruce simply cannot focus on his experiments anymore. Every time he tries to get some work done, all he can think of is last night – the sheen of Tony’s eyes, the jutting jaw, and the set of his shoulders. Highly distracting. And distraction isn’t something Bruce generally holds truck with. Not a single measurement taken in four hours in the lab! This is completely out of hand.

If Bruce had been any other man, he would have slammed his pen in the table in frustration. But Bruce rarely slams anything anywhere, so he sets it down neatly next to his notebook, deftly dog-ears the page he’s on, and closes the notebook. Something has to be done.

Bruce wonders, fleetingly, as he stands in Tony’s private elevator, if this is such a good idea. He brushes the thought away. Tony won’t mind – right? The elevator slides into position at the penthouse, and the doors slide open soundlessly. Bruce steps out and looks around the penthouse. No sign of Tony.

“JARVIS,” Bruce says aloud, “Where’s Tony?”

“Mr. Stark is still asleep, sir. Would you like me to wake him?”

“Oh. Um – ”

There was the sound of sirens off to Bruce’s left. Of course. That would be what it took to get Tony out of bed.

“What? WHAT? What _god damn time is it,_ JARVIS? _Eight-thirty?_ What in the _hell_ do you think you’re doing, getting me up this early? Why didn’t I program a snooze button, JARVIS? Artificial Intelligence, more like Artificial _Jackass._ ”

Tony is not at the top of his game in the insult department this early in the morning. Bruce fiddles with a button on his shirt, and pushes his hair back nervously. His hair springs right back into place – his hair always resists that sort of motion.

“Sir,” says the artificial butler dully, “Doctor Bruce Banner is waiting for you in the anteroom.”

“Well, Jesus, JARVIS, why didn’t you just say so? No need to break out the sirens at eight in the morning. Shit.”

“The current time is eight-thirty-four, Mr. Stark.”

“Shut up, JARVIS.”

A minute later Tony stalks out of his bedroom, wearing Bruce’s lab coat. Bruce has a sneaking suspicion that’s all he’s wearing. And he’s mis-buttoned the thing. Tony’s hair is tousled – and not in his typical, contrived way – and his eyes are puffy from sleep. There are lines from his pillow on one of his cheeks, and he’s squinting in the sunlight that pours in from the huge windows, though he might also be glaring.

“How did you get up here?” Tony growls, his voice still a bit hoarse. “Did you use my elevator? _Strike Two_ , Banner. You really are pushing it.” Tony claps a groggy hand on Bruce’s shoulder as he passes on his way towards the bar.

“Hey, you just woke up, don’t start with that alcohol crap,” Bruce says, watching him. Tony stops in his tracks and looks back at Bruce, then diverts his course and goes to the windows to survey the city.

“Fine,” he says. “JARVIS, make me some coffee. You want some, Bruce? How do you take it?”

“More cream than coffee, and a lot of sugar.”

“Philistine. Black’s the only way to drink coffee. Have it your way, though. Can I ask what I have done to merit this _very early_ visit?”

Bruce is silent for a moment. Truth is, he doesn’t really have an answer for Tony – well, that was, one that doesn’t involve the phrase ‘I just couldn’t stop thinking about you.’

“We should get that microchip implanted today, Doc,” Tony says conversationally. “Get your, uh, _research_ , rolling.”

“Yeah, uh, you’re right,” Bruce says. He’d brought himself up here, but now he’s once again in Tony’s territory, and once again he doesn’t know what to do with himself. “Research,” he mumbles absent-mindedly. He doesn’t mean for Tony to hear, but he definitely does – to Tony’s eternal credit, he pretends as though he doesn’t.

“You ready for that kind of pressure, Banner?” Tony teases. “Sure the Big Guy isn’t gonna come out if I poke you with a little needle?”

“I think I’ll have it under control – wait, did you say _you_ were going to poke me with a needle?”

“I sure did, Brucey. What’s that look for? Don’t trust me?”

“Not as far as I can throw you.”

“You could probably throw me pretty far, I think.”

“ _I_ couldn’t throw you anywhere. You’re thinking of the... Other Guy. _He_ could probably throw you all the way to San Franciso.”

“You know, I don’t know why you insist on making the distinction. The Hulk’s a part of you, Bruce, one way or the other.”

There is a deafening silence as Bruce suppresses a surge of annoyance. “I _make the distinction_ because the Other Guy _kills people,_ Tony. _I_ don’t kill people. I never wanted to and I never will.”

There is another silence, and Tony just looks at Bruce. It makes Bruce uncomfortable, being watched so closely.

Bruce smiles nervously and pinches the bridge of his nose, to diffuse the tension. “I’m sorry. It’s too early in the morning to be discussing this stuff. Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” says Tony. “If you want to talk, we’ll talk.

“No, it’s fine. It uh… it’s a touchy subject anyway. Better to leave it alone.”

Tony scrutinizes him again, and just when Bruce thinks he can’t take it anymore, Tony breaks his gaze.

“Damn it, JARVIS, where the hell is that coffee?” he calls to the AI. “I stand by what I said about you being an Artificial Jackass.”

“The coffee is on the bar, sir. I didn’t think it prudent to interrupt your conversation.”

“…Alright, JARVIS, thanks. I take back what I said about you being a jackass.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Tony retrieves the mugs – stylish black things, the sort Bruce definitely isn’t used to. The only mug he’d had before coming to the Tower was a chipped and very cheap mug with a picture of Garfield that was so faded it was barely recognizable. Tony hands Bruce’s mug to him, and takes a ginger sip of his own (likely blazingly hot) coffee. He doesn’t even flinch at the heat, and when he lowers his mug he holds it carelessly off to his side. Bruce looks down at his cup of coffee, held with both hands close to his chest as if he were trying to shield it from some terrible attack.

“Anyway,” Tony says with a careless wave of his coffee cup, “I don’t really trust some random doc to come in here and poke a big needle into your chest. So I’ll do it.”

“Well, why don’t I – ”

“Because you’re not a medical doctor, Banner.”

“Neither are you, Tony.”

Tony grimaces and looks at Bruce askance. “Don’t get technical, Bruce. Don’t you trust me?”

Bruce watches Tony as Tony takes another sip of his coffee, keeping those shining brown eyes on Bruce at all times. It isn’t that he doesn’t trust Tony – well, actually, it is a bit. But it’s more that he doesn’t trust himself. Bruce doesn’t say anything.

“Well, I’ll take that as a yes,” Tony goes on. “We’re getting that chip under your skin as soon as I wake up enough to hold the thing steady.”

And Tony makes good on his promise. Hardly half an hour later, he motions to a chair and tells Bruce to sit in it and take off his shirt. Tony goes off to retrieve the Thing, the watch, a small white bottle of something, and a strange looking device with a very wide needle from his workshop. Tony returned just as Bruce was stripping off his shirt. He tried not to stare as he set his materials on the coffee table in front of Bruce’s chair.

“Topical anesthetic?” Bruce asks as Tony brandishes the small white bottle. Bruce sits in the chair. Tony pops open the lid of the bottle of anesthetic and hands it to Bruce, who rubs a bit of it on his chest, over his heart and a little to the left of his sternum and under his pectoral muscle. Tony loads the little pill-shaped Thing into the needle-device, and waits while Bruce rubs the cream into his skin.

“All numb?” Tony says after a moment.

“Feels like it,” Bruce replies.

“You ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Make sure your muscles stay relaxed or I’ll never get this thing in. Especially not if the Big Guy decides to make an appearance.”

“I’ve got it.”

Positioning himself at Bruce’s side, Tony sucks in a gulp of air as quietly as he can and holds it. He sticks the needle into Bruce’s numbed skin and pushes the chip into the flesh and muscle. When he’s sure the Thing is lodged under Bruce’s skin, Tony pulls the needle out. Bruce and Tony watch for a second as the small wound bleeds a little.

Bruce looks up at Tony and smiles. “You know, I _am_ a medical doctor, in addition to a nuclear physicist,” Bruce says, watching Tony’s face closely to monitor his reaction. “I picked it up, along the way, and I had to get certified in Kolkata before I could run around treating people. But, uh… I thought I’d let you do it. You seemed hell-bent on it.”

Tony laughs.

Tony doesn’t actually laugh often. Mostly he just grins, or smirks. Laughing isn’t _cool_ , it isn’t _collected_ , it’s a raw expression of emotion, of joy. Tony can’t express emotion like that – well, not without hiding behind a curtain of words. Tony is good with words, he always has been. Tony can say what’s on his mind, but he can’t just… let it happen, naturally, without some clever phraseology and cocky self-aggrandizing. Even Bruce is better at that than he is. Bruce isn’t afraid to laugh, to sigh, to be afraid. He’s just afraid of the anger. Tony looks confident, always, without fail, but underneath that, he’s terrified of someone finding out that he cares about something.

About _someone_. Tony looks at Bruce, who has this smile that just makes Tony want to jump, or something. It’s something about the way his eyes crinkle up, and the way his smiles are always slow – you can see them coming, and the anticipation builds up before it happens, and they never surprised you but somehow you were still shocked by them. Every single one of Bruce’s smiles is genuine, because he doesn’t have the energy to produce a fake one.

“Was it something I said?” Bruce grins, watching Tony’s face.

“No,” says Tony. “It’s just… you.”

Bruce goes right on smiling as Tony sets the needle down, wipes the small wound with some gauze, and bandages it with a clean pad of gauze and some medical tape.

“There,” says Tony, “All fixed up. Switch on the watch.”

Bruce stands and grabs the watch off the table. He examines it for a moment and presses down on a small black button on the side of it. The watch gives a short beep, then begins displaying Bruce’s heart rate.

“Those two buttons on the other side let you cycle through each of your vital readings. Plus, the Thing actually tells time, see the digital clock up there in the corner?”

That smile stays fixed in place as Bruce examines the watch, flicking through each of his vital signs. “Thanks, Tony,” he says softly.

“Yeah,” Tony replies, watching him closely. Bruce glances up at him and Tony looks away quickly, pretending as though he hasn’t been studying Bruce like he’s some sort of fascinating and beautiful animal. Bruce straps the watch to his right wrist and grabs for his shirt. He pulls it on gently, careful not to disturb the bandage.

“See? Twinsies,” Tony says, gesturing to the bump under Bruce’s shirt that belies the gauze.

“Yeah,” says Bruce. “Thanks, again, Tony. This Thing is… well, it’s a lot better than I could have done.”

“Don’t mention it. Seriously. What are friends for?” Tony puts an arm around Bruce’s shoulders.

The watch begins to beep – not urgently, just a casual warning. Bruce glances at it hastily.

“It says, uh, my blood sugar is a bit low,” Bruce mutters. “Do you want to, I don’t know, get breakfast somewhere?”

“Yeah,” says Tony, playing along – that monitor hadn’t been showing his blood sugar, it had been showing his heart rate. Tony’s own heart rate is a little elevated, if he’s honest with himself. “Breakfast sounds great.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce Banner and Tony Stark get to know each other in the aftermath of their first battle as The Avengers - and discover that there might be something there.

Tony hears Steve Rogers’ voice faintly through the blaring rock music that is playing over the stereo in Tony’s lab. Tony rolls his eyes. He _knew_ there was a reason he kept that intercom switched off. Tony throws his pliers onto his workbench, lowers the volume of the stereo, and walks over to the intercom to hear what Steve is saying.

“…-ing in the Blue Room in fifteen minutes. Attendance is mandatory. That means _you,_ Stark.”

The Blue Room. That must mean the gang’s getting together, for some “mandatory” meeting, likely devised by Rogers or by Fury himself. Tony is not prepared to deal with this today. Tony has been doing his first honest day’s work in almost a week. He sniffs. “I _heard_ that, Apple Pie,” Tony retorts in the direction of the intercom. “And don’t worry, I’ll be there.”

“I’m glad, Tony,” Steve says, and there is a silence that means Rogers has switched off his intercom. Blue Room in fifteen minutes, huh? Tony guesses it’s time to put on a shirt.

Tony is not, as would have been predicted, the last one to arrive in the Blue Room for the team meeting. Steve is there already, just watching the door with his arms folded. Tony ignores him. Thor is eating something in the small kitchen, but when isn’t he? Natasha sits on a barstool, inspecting her nails with an angry look on her face (as if that’s new information). Next to her, though, is Bruce, leaning back against the bar with his hands in his pockets and that sour look on his face.

“Hey,” Tony says, with eyes only for Bruce.

Bruce shakes his head a little and looks up at Tony, as if Tony’s voice had jerked him out of some deep thoughts. “Hey,” he says.

“Where is Clint?” Steve says. Tony turns around to look at him.

“I don’t know,” says Natasha. “He should be here.”

“I said fifteen minutes,” says Steve.

“He’ll be here, give the man a break,” Tony says coolly.

Steve opens his mouth to argue, but Clint strides into the room before Steve gets the chance. “Sorry,” Clint says. He joins Thor in the kitchen, snatching a handful of what looks to be potato chips from the paper plate the god is holding with one massive hand. All the silverware and dishes in this room had been replaced with disposable ones, since they had realized after the first day that the team couldn’t be trusted not to break proper ceramic ones.

“Great, now that everyone is here, let’s get started,” says Steve. “Fury thinks we ought to be doing some training together. The Tower is a big place and each of us have our own floor, we hardly spend time working as a team. That goes double for Tony and Bruce, since they spend all day locked up in their labs and workshops.”

“We have important work to do, Rogers, that isn’t our fault,” Tony says. Steve ignores him.

“So we should organize a training regimen,” Steve goes on. “I know we all do what we have to on our own but that won’t make us a more cohesive team.”

“How do you propose to do that?” Natasha chimes in. “It’s hard for Tony, Thor, and Bruce to get any training in – they’re so destructive when they fight. Sorry, Banner, but that’s the truth.”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Bruce dismissively.

“That’s the other thing. Tony, have you given any thought as to a contingency plan in case Doctor Banner has an… accident?” Steve says, shrugging his shoulders as if he _weren’t_ falsely accusing a team member of something.

“I _have_ a contingency plan,” says Tony icily. “It’s called letting Banner manage his own shit, so that he doesn’t _have_ an accident.”

“But the damage the Hulk could cause to the Tower – not to mention Manhattan – is, quite frankly, staggering. You’ve got to have a better plan than just… letting him handle it.”

“Oh, please, ‘the damage is staggering’. Do you know how _stupid_ you sound right now? Banner hasn’t broken so much as a test tube in the entire time he’s been here. Thor broke, by my last count, four Xboxes, two televisions, an entire kitchen, the weight room, two ping-pong tables, eight coffee mugs and a staggering _fourteen_ beer glasses of three different styles, this week alone. _You,_ Rogers, managed to break a toaster, a coffee machine, _and_ a hell of a lot of expensive exercise equipment yourself. Hell, even _I’ve_ broken more things in the past months than Bruce has even _thought_ about breaking. So cut the bullshit, Rogers, what’s this really about?”

“I just think there ought to be a few more safety precautions, just in case Bruce can’t handle it,” Steve says, straightening. “Doctor Banner, you might want to consider stepping outside for a breather.”

“Uh, thanks, Steve, but I think – ” Bruce starts to say. Tony is not having any of this.

“You know, I think Bruce is capable of listening to a conversation that might get him thrown out of his _home,_ and _my_ Tower,” Tony snaps.

“I just don’t think it’s a smart idea for Bruce to be in such a high-pressure situation with his condition is all,” Steve says. He acts calm, but Tony watches as he squares his jaw and scowls. “You know what happened last – ”

“Shut up, Rogers, you complete ass,” Tony interrupts hotly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Banner hadn’t had an incident in over a year before the business with Loki. Don’t tell him what he can’t handle, because he knows what he’s capable of. You think Bruce is unstable, well, I’ve got news for you, _Captain:_ each and every person on this team is emotionally unstable. I’m starting to think Bruce is the most sane out of all of us. So just… _stop,_ with your bullshit, telling Bruce what situations he should and shouldn’t be in, because he’s smart enough to know the difference. Don’t tell him he can’t control himself. All he needs is someone who believes he can do it, and you idiots are in a prime position to help him out and you aren’t, you just _aren’t._ So fuck off, if you’re going to pretend like he’s a four-year-old with no self-control, because he’s the strongest guy here, and you all need to _know_ that.”

There is a heavy silence and Tony is suddenly aware of his fingernails digging into his palms, his shoulders tensed up, bile rising in his throat. Tony glares at Steve, who isn’t exactly looking friendly either. The others sit in awed silence, and Tony knows why. It isn’t often that Tony Stark loses his cool. Tony is the master of cool. He’d perfected cool. He’d raised cool to the level of art. But there is something about Bruce that makes him defensive. Tony really meant what he said when he told Bruce he could be angry enough for the both of them.

After a few tense moments, Bruce clears his throat and says calmly, “Well, if we’re all done arguing over me now, I’d like to actually get something done today, so…”

“I agree with Anthony,” says Thor, standing and striding (in that peculiar way of his, where he seems to cover much more ground with a single step than a person ought to be able to do) over to Tony. He claps a huge, massively strong hand on Tony’s shoulder. Tony tries not to flinch under the sudden weight. “The Doctor is a good man, of strong heart and sound mind. He is to be trusted with our lives.” Thor strides over to Bruce and gives him a heavy-handed pat on the back. Bruce winces at the sudden impact, but forces a smile anyway.

“Thanks, Thor, that means a lot, coming from you,” he says softly.

“You are welcome, Angry One.”

“And in case you’re all _really_ concerned,” snaps Tony, “Doctor Banner has a chip in his chest that syncs to an alarm in his watch. I didn’t hear it go off even once during this conversation, did _you?_ Banner has it under control. Don’t baby him.”

“A chip?” Clint says, “You mean like the kind they put in cats and dogs?” Bruce scowls and opens his mouth to argue.

“Yeah, but much more advanced,” Tony interrupts with a shrug. “Obviously. _I_ made it.”

“How’s it work?”

“Measures his vitals, and the levels of gamma radiation inside and outside of his body. Very efficient. We’ll know if Bruce loses control – which he won’t.”

Tony takes this opportunity to shoot an angry glance at Steve, and Bruce breaks in. “Ah - well - ” he says, “Do we have some other business to discuss or…”

“No,” says Steve icily. “Everyone just think about how we can organize some pair or group work, and maybe we can work out some kind of schedule later. You’re all free to go.”

“Great,” says Tony. He lets the others filter out of the room ahead of him. Tony makes to follow Bruce out the door, but Steve speaks behind him.

“Stark, stay here for a moment,” he says. Tony stops in his tracks and turns to face Steve.

“Is there something you need, Steve?” Tony says. “Because I was told I was free to go.”

“Yeah, what exactly was that?” Steve hisses. “I don’t need you yelling at me in front of the team, and I don’t need your ego, either.”

“I’m sorry, forgive me if I’m wrong, but I recall this _team_ being a _democracy,_ not a _dictatorship,_ ” Tony taunts, “I thought _Captain Fucking America_ might remember that. And I don’t remember electing you the President. So why don’t you let me – and all of us, _especially_ Bruce – live our lives?”

Steve narrows his eyes, but doesn’t have anything to say in return. With a smirk, Tony turns and stalks out of the Blue Room. He startles Clint and Natasha, who had obviously hung back to listen by the door to the conversation between him and Steve. Tony glances both ways down the hall and spots Bruce walking away down the corridor to the left. Tony increases his stride to catch up with him.

“Hey,” Tony says, putting a hand on Bruce’s back. “How’s the chest doing?”

“Better,” Bruce replies. “I took off the bandage this morning. Looks like it’s healing fine.”

“Great,” Tony says. For the first time in a long time, Tony Stark doesn’t have anything else to say. There is a thick silence.

“Thanks for, uh,” Bruce mumbles, “Thanks for vouching for me, back there. It’s nice to have someone on your side, you know? Someone who doesn’t think you’re going to lose it at any second.”

“Yeah,” says Tony, “Yeah, no problem.”

“Well… I’ve got to get back to the lab. I’ll see you later, Tony?”

“Yeah. Hey, listen, you should get dinner with me tonight.”

“What?”

“Dinner. Do you want to go out, and get dinner? With me? Tonight?”

“Um. Yeah. I guess. Yeah, that sounds great.”

“Great. I’ll just… I’ll intercom you, okay?”

“Yeah.” Bruce smiles, then turns and walks down the hall towards the elevator that will take him back up to his lab. Tony watches until he’s out of sight, then heads back the other way, towards his own elevator.

* * *

Bruce is a strange and uncomfortable mixture of confused and upset as he closes his lab door gently behind him. Yes, confused, upset, and uncomfortable, but strangely not dangerously close to… the Other Guy. But all this confusion came from Tony. Exceedingly simple yet completely enigmatic Tony Stark. What did he mean by _dinner?_ Lunch was one thing, that was friendly and might not mean anything at all, but dinner? That, Bruce is sure, meant a _date,_ and if it _is_ a _date,_ then why would Tony pick Bruce, out of all the people in the world the famous Tony Stark could have? It isn’t that Bruce _doesn’t_ want to go on a date with Tony Stark, it’s just that… well, it seems so unlikely.

And what had been with all that stuff about not _babying_ Bruce? If Bruce is honest with himself, he _is_ pretty damn sick of everyone, even the people he calls his teammates and his friends, telling him what he can and can’t handle. It isn’t easy for Bruce to stand up for himself without the Other Guy wanting a turn, but that doesn’t mean Bruce _can’t_ stand up for himself, and that doesn’t mean that he necessarily wants Tony to, either….

But that was Tony. Smooth-talking, ultra-confident, in-your-face Tony Stark. Nobody tells Tony Stark what to do. He’s always been his own boss and he doesn’t even let people who are much bigger than he is, in a figurative and a literal sense, push him around. Tony pushes everyone else first, and right off the bat, because he wants them to know who he is and what he will stand for. Tony protects himself in the exact opposite way that Bruce does. Tony puts himself out there, all aggression and belligerence and unflinching wit. He projects these things like a wall, and no one thinks about trying to push past it. So Tony Stark does what he wants, and it always works out for him, because either people are too afraid to challenge him, or the sheer force of his will overcomes them before they can touch him.

All at once, Bruce realizes what’s happened. Tony isn’t just building his wall of super-confidence between himself and the world anymore. He’s building it between them both. Bruce is suddenly and inexplicably sitting comfortably in the eye of the hurricane of protective aggression that is Tony Stark, and it’s really working for him. No one could possibly go wrong with Tony as their buffer between them and the world. Bruce doesn’t ask himself why it’s happened or how it happened. All that matters is that it _has_ happened, and he is, bafflingly, _glad_ about it. At least with Tony fighting on that front, Bruce is sure he has one less thing to worry about.

And that’s another thing. Tony is the first person who’s really believed in him, believed he wasn’t a monster, someone out of control who needs to be sedated or locked up or tiptoed around.

It is with the most extreme peace of mind that he has felt in a long time – not total peace, never total peace, but closer than usual – that Bruce toils on his experiments for the rest of the day.

“Ready for dinner?” says Tony’s voice out of the intercom that evening, toppling the house of cards that silence in Bruce’s lab has seemed to become lately. “Meet me in the garage, by the Maseratis.”

“Tony, I don’t know where the Maseratis are,” says Bruce desperately, trying to cover the exasperation in his voice, “And I didn’t even know you had more than one.”

“What self-respecting billionaire would settle for _one_ Maserati?” Tony muses. “JARVIS can tell you where they are. If you aren’t in the garage in fifteen I’m leaving without you.”

The intercom shuts off, and Bruce sighs into the restored silence. He supposes he ought to put something nicer on – maybe something that’s ironed…

Twenty minutes later, Bruce is wandering the expansive garage, JARVIS’ directions having already slipped out of his head. Bruce is so busy looking at a spectrum of Lamborghinis that an ear-splitting honk from behind him nearly scares him out of his wits. Whipping around, he sees Tony smiling from behind the wheel of a wine-colored Maserati.

“There you are, big guy,” he says, “I was worried you weren’t coming.”

“I sort of got lost in this maze of vehicular splendor,” says Bruce with a small smile. “Is it bigger on the inside, or something?”

“Trust me, it’s big from the outside, too,” Tony says, raising his eyebrows. “Hey, you wanna drive? The thing’s got a built-in nav system, you can’t go wrong.”

“No thanks. I don’t drive. Especially not in crowded cities.”

“What’s the matter, Banner, you get road rage or something? Well, have it your way.”

Bruce climbs carefully into the passenger’s seat, moving gingerly in case he scuffs or scratches something.

“You don’t have to treat her like she’s made of glass, you know,” says Tony, turning the key in the ignition. “You act like I can’t even pay for reupholstering the seats, let alone buy a _fleet_ of new ones.” The engine purrs to life and Bruce tries (unsuccessfully) to hold back a shiver of excitement. However much he pretends he doesn’t, he really does appreciate a nice car.

“I don’t think they call a group of cars a _fleet_ ,” he says, to mask his exhilaration.

“A squadron, a herd, a murder, I don’t really care. The point is I could have one if I wanted,” Tony replies. “And for the record they actually _do_ call it a fleet. I ought to know, I have one.” He puts the convertible top of the car down with a press of a button, then zooms out of the garage and onto the streets of Manhattan.

The restaurant they eventually arrive at is much fancier than Bruce had been expecting. Bruce doesn’t know _why_ exactly he had been expecting anything less – possibly because the places Tony had taken him for lunch were much less upscale. This place was dimly-lit, which was a strange social trend Bruce doesn’t really like, and quiet, for a restaurant, since the people who were talking spoke almost exclusively in hushed whispers. The restaurant is comfortably furnished and elaborately decorated, which makes Bruce feel like a clumsy six-year-old in a palace of glass – not that that wasn’t how he’d felt when he’d first come to live at the Tower.

Say what you would about Tony Stark, but the one thing he wasn’t, was cheap. He can afford anything, but he somehow isn’t selfish, and he never expects anything in return. Tony Stark is a man with skin of iron and a heart of gold. Under all that bravado is really just a caring man who wants to make the people he likes happy.

“Reservation for Stark,” Tony says, not especially loudly, but loud enough that the whole restaurant hears him through the hush. Bruce feels intensely awkward and completely out of his element, especially as he and Tony had passed several groups and nervous couples who were waiting in line for tables on the way in. Couples and friends all around the restaurant pointed or whisper to their friends or dates and Bruce catches Tony’s name in their murmurs.

“Ah, of course, sir. Your floor is ready,” says the maître d’, with a voice that was much too posh and much too fake for downtown New York.

“Floor?” Bruce mutters quietly to Tony.

“I called ahead and had them reserve the entire upper floor,” Tony says in reply. He follows the maître d’ with a knowing smile. “Don’t look so surprised. You act like no one has ever rented out an entire floor of a restaurant for you before.”

‘Bemused’ is not a transitory state for someone who spends as much time with Tony as Bruce does. It is a way of life.

The maître d’ leads them up a narrow flight of stairs to a much smaller space. It is nearly silent in this upstairs room, since it’s empty and the people who are talking downstairs are muffled by the distance and the elaborate furniture. Tony picks a small table in a far corner and the maître d’ hands them their menus, pours glasses of mineral water, and quickly disappears. Bruce opens a menu, sighs, and puts on his glasses. The dim light is a trend he hates because it makes it exceptionally difficult to read the tiny, curly writing places like this always used on their menus. He scrutinizes the menu for a minute, then puts it down with an exasperated sigh.

“Too fancy?” says Tony, grimacing playfully. “’Cause if so, I know a great burger place not too far away from here.”

“It’s uh,” Bruce stammers as he tries to read the name of a dish that he _thinks_ is fish-based, though he doesn’t know any French so he can’t be sure, “It’s not too fancy.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I mean, you rented out a whole floor.”

Tony has a strange, slightly amused look on his face, but he hides it with his menu. Bruce tries to read the menu again, but gives up and just glances around at the splendor. If this is what it takes to be friends with Tony Stark, he isn’t sure he wants that.

“What’re you gonna have?” says Tony, looking over his menu at Bruce. “I’ve been thinking about the Huîtres en Coquilles Saint Jaques, and I’d ask if you wanted some wine but of course, you don’t drink…”

Bruce pauses for a moment, glancing between Tony with his gloating smile and the unreadable menu. “I changed my mind,” he says suddenly. “I want burgers.”

“I thought you’d _never_ ask,” says Tony eagerly, standing and leaving the menu abandoned on the seat as he does so. Bruce stands up hesitantly, surprised at Tony’s willingness.

“But what about…” he starts.

“The floor? I’ll pay them anyway. Treat all the people waiting for tables to a free meal, on me.”

With just a quick word from Tony to the maître d’ about the reserved floor, the two men are out of the restaurant less than ten minutes after they’d entered it. Soon enough, Tony and Bruce are eating cheeseburgers in the Maserati on the way back to the Tower.

“Tony,” Bruce askes, half of the cheeseburger in his hands still leaking sauce onto its paper wrapper, “If you wanted burgers, why did we go to that French place?”

“I wanted to see what you’d do,” Tony shrugs. “I really do hate those places. Also I might have been showing off, just a little. It really does impress models and it nearly always gets you laid. Sad but true.” He punctuates his statement with a large bite of his second cheeseburger.

“I think you’ve been ‘showing off’ since the minute I met you,” Bruce says, smiling.

“I’ve been showing off since I was old enough to walk,” Tony replies, glancing over to gauge Bruce’s reaction. They grin at each other and Tony accelerates the car a little, and zooms off towards home.

“The fancy French restaurant thing… does it really get you laid?” Bruce asks as Stark Tower – _Avengers_ Tower, he mentally corrects himself – looms on the horizon.

A small sad smile plays at the corners of Tony’s lips. “Only with the sort of people who are impressed by that sort of thing. I hate places like that. I’d rather get Thai or Indian or cheeseburgers. Honestly every time I read the word ‘avec’, I just crave _grease_ instead. I’ve been pulling that stunt since I was nineteen and almost every time I wished my date would say they didn’t want to be there, either.”

Bruce is quiet. He’s good at knowing when to be quiet – it’s better, in his experience, to stay quiet, in case you say something that makes it all worse.

“So I guess congratulations on being the first,” Tony says after a moment. Bruce smiles into his half-eaten cheeseburger as they pull into Tony’s cavernous garage.

* * *

The days pass both slowly and extremely fast for Bruce. The days and nights are filled, as they always were before the accident, with experiments, research, writing; anything to keep his mind occupied. Tony has moved a lot of his equipment – including Dummy, who is Tony’s favorite and most trusted robot despite the verbal coals he heaps on its back – down to Bruce’s lab so that he can tinker and spend time with Bruce at the same time. This way, the two of them are always on hand to help the other out if needed. Tony is a fantastic lab partner. He knows what he’s doing, and never needs to be told twice. He has the abilities of an entire lab full of grad students with none of the incompetency. In his turn, Tony has given Bruce a lot of knowledge about engineering – it was an area he hadn’t really explored before, but he picked it up quickly, as he did most things.

So the two of them spend their time on anything they want. Sometimes Tony takes off for a meeting or an opening or zooms off to some event halfway around the country or the world, but Bruce never minds. The two of them are living the sort of life people like them always want; working among intellectual equals and with unrestrained resources, plenty of time, and constant, unswerving, intuitive companionship. Tony is always back from his jaunts as soon as he can be – he’s eager to return to what has become business as usual.

However, the one drawback is that the quiet of Bruce’s lab has been forever shattered. The way Tony sees it, just because Bruce wants quiet while he works doesn’t mean Tony has to like it, and right now it is much too quiet for Tony’s liking. They’ve finished their experiment for tonight, and nothing else could be done until the computer had run the calculations from the collected data. Tony looks at the progress bar. The computer is running the calculations at its fastest speed, but it has been ten minutes and it’s only 1% done. There’s no way the calculations will be done before morning.

“We can’t do anything else until these calculations are finished, right?” Tony asks, battling fiercely with his boredom and watching Bruce adjust his glasses on his nose as he bends over a ridiculously-boring-looking textbook. “Is this all we’re going to do?”

“I’m not going to do any more experiments tonight,” Bruce says with a sigh, “I think I’ll just head back to my room and finish this…” Tony glances at the book in Bruce’s hands. He is halfway through, but certainly more than 500 pages from the end. Tony has no doubts that Bruce would finish it tonight, given the chance.

“Nope, I don’t want you sleeping in that apartment all alone,” Tony says blithely. “Come sleep in my room, with me. No funny business, I swear.”

“I have work to do, Tony, I can’t – and why – ”

“Hey, don’t argue. You’ve done enough work for today. Just… come hang out with me, okay? Do me a favor, and just, spend some time with me. Not working.”

“But – ”

“Well, have it your way. Bring that _awful_ -looking book you’re reading – what is that, microbiology? We’ll have a quiet night, with your boring books.”

“Microbiology isn’t boring, Tony.”

“Uh, hello, yes it is. Bacteria, hormones – who thinks that stuff is interesting? Anyway, that’s not the point. You’ve got something to say to me and you aren’t ready to say it right now but you will be in a couple of hours and then you’ll wish I was still around so you could give me a piece of your mind. So be thinking about it, and just… come upstairs to the penthouse and spend the night with me. This problem isn’t as hard as all that mental calculus you do, so why is it taking you longer?”

Bruce is biting the inside of his lip, something he does when he is confused because he thinks people won’t notice. But Tony notices – it changes the shape of Bruce’s mouth and it’s always accompanied by a knitting of eyebrows and a strange sort of deer in the headlights look. Bruce thinks he’s so good at hiding his emotions, and he is, to most people, but Tony reads him like an open journal of scientific engineering.

“No, I don’t have anything to say,” says Bruce, and as he does so he successfully manages to suppress whatever thoughts had been glimmering behind his eyes only a moment before. “Yeah, let’s go to the penthouse. I’m sure I’ll be more comfortable on the couch than I am at my lab bench.”

The first thing Tony does when he got back to his penthouse was remove his jeans, though he leaves his boxers and shirt on. He lies down on the couch where Bruce is sitting with his book propped up on his knees and turns the TV on. After flipping through channels for a while Tony eventually gives up and settles on some cooking show – that seems like the sort of thing Bruce would watch, and Bruce doesn’t complain. The woman’s easy chatter about cooking methods bores Tony. Tony stretches and lays his head on Bruce’s lap, almost without thinking.

“What are you doing?” Bruce asks, looking down at him.

“You aren’t using your right hand,” Tony says. “You ought to give me a head massage. I know what you’re thinking, but if that was the case I’d be asking you to massage a different part of me, ha ha ha.”

“I wasn’t thinking anything,” Bruce says, setting his book down on his knees. “A head massage? You mean, like you want me to play with your hair? Are you asking me to pet you, like a dog?”

“I am _not_ asking you to _pet me,_ ” says Tony, “I’m asking you to play with my hair. Really get your fingers in it, down to the scalp. This sounds a lot dirtier than I mean it to be.”

“If I scratch your head, will you let me read my book in peace?”

“Your reading will be wholly unimpeded, I swear.” Tony sticks out his lower lip and widens his eyes, pouting. “Please?”

With a tremendous sigh, Bruce runs his fingers through Tony’s hair. Tony smiles – he could practically have purred. Sometimes you just need a good head rub, and Bruce’s long fingers are perfect for the job. Bruce rubs Tony’s scalp, tugging gently at his hair, twisting it, pulling it this way and that. Tony loves it when people play with his hair, and nobody had in far too long – not since Pepper had left. The penthouse is unusually silent – by Tony’s standards, anyway, since Bruce had turned off the TV a while ago since he likes quiet while he reads – and Tony is drifting off. When Bruce looks up from his book and speaks, it almost scares Tony out of his wits.

“What, uh,” Bruce splutters, that sour look on his face again, “What is all this, to you? What are… we? I mean, are we friends or… are we… I don’t know… something more?”

“Jesus, Banner, way to spring that one on me. Is this about the head massage?” Tony says, looking up at him. Bruce frowns a little and glanced away. “I think, though…” Tony continues slowly, realizing that this is probably not a time for jokes, for once, “I think that… if you want us to be something that’s… more-than-friends, then we can be that.”

“But – well – I – yeah,” Bruce stammers. “Yeah. I don’t – yes. I think that we should be more-than-friends.”

“More-than-friends it is then,” Tony says. He watches Bruce and Bruce watches him. More-than-friends is fine, for now. More-than-friends implies a _relationship,_ without either of them saying it. Tony doesn’t like categories. He _hates_ words like “boyfriend” and “partner”. More-than-friends is just vague enough, but also just committed enough, and it suits Tony just fine.

“Yeah,” Bruce says.

There is silence for a long while after that. Tony likes testing Bruce’s limits with his constant chatter and noise, but there are some times – and Tony recognizes it by the set of Bruce’s shoulders, by the deepness of the lines on Bruce’s face, or by gut feeling – that Bruce needs silence to be alone with his thoughts. Tony adjusts his position so that he can read the page Bruce is reading, and his last thought before he falls asleep in Bruce’s lap is that microbiology is just as boring as he’d expected.

* * *

The clattering of dishes in the main room wakes Tony the next morning. He is in his bed – strange, considering he’d fallen asleep on the couch – and… is that Bruce in Tony’s kitchen?

Tony stumbles out of his bedroom, stretching the sleep out of his muscles. “How’d I get in my bed?”

“You walked there,” says Bruce. He’s setting the small table with a set of white dishes. Tony wishes he would use the fancy black ones – those were the ones Tony preferred. “You were pretty out of it, I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”

“Are you… are you cooking me _breakfast_ , Banner?” Tony says. It smells like bacon and pancakes.

“Well, I was cooking _me_ breakfast but it just so happens I made enough for two and you can eat with me now that you’re up.” There’s a wicked smile spreading on Bruce’s face that Tony just barely sees before Bruce turns and goes to flip the pancakes.

“What’s so funny, Jolly Green?” snaps Tony.

“You drool when you sleep,” Bruce says, unable to contain his amusement.

“You morning people sicken me. It’s too early for laughter.”

Bruce laughs, almost as if he were trying to spite Tony, but brings him bacon and pancakes anyway. Tony eats them silently, but gratefully, wondering where and when Bruce had learned to cook so well. Tony had probably been very right about Bruce watching cooking shows.

“You ought to spend the night more often, Banner,” Tony says eventually through a mouthful of bacon. “Food’s delicious.”

“Thanks,” says Bruce, smiling.

Tony, finished with his breakfast, stands and paces to the bar. He stretches, then begins pouring himself a glass of whiskey.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” says Bruce softly.

Tony stops mid-pour. He stares at Bruce as he sits the bottle down, then grabs the glass, reaches over, and pours it down the sink. Bruce looks down at his hands and fiddles with the cuticle of his right thumb.

“It’s just… I had a lot of bad experiences with alcohol. With alcoholics,” Bruce mutters. He frowns, trying to keep the memories at bay.

“Bruce, look at me,” Tony says, and Bruce glances up. “That was a very expensive glass of scotch I poured down the drain. If that’s what you want, if that’s what it takes, then so be it. I’ll pour every bottle out.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Bruce says hastily, “I just… I just meant…”

“Stop talking, Bruce. I understand. I _get it_. It isn’t a problem. I’ll do this for you, because you asked. Just like everything else. Really, I’m not being sarcastic. For once. You want me to stop, I’ll stop.”

“I – uh – ” Bruce stutters, “Thanks, Tony. That uh… that means… A lot more than you think it does.”

Tony watches his more-than-friend carefully, then strides back over and sits down next to him. Without saying anything, without hardly giving it a second thought, Tony pulls Bruce close and hugs him. Tony wasn’t much of a hugger, normally. He was either a back-patter or a kisser or a lover, but rarely a hugger. But a hug is what Bruce needs right now. Not a kiss, not sex, not talking, just silent, comforting human contact. So Tony hugs him, wraps his arms tight but not too tight around him and lets Bruce bury his face in Tony’s neck with Bruce’s arms folded up between the two of them and Tony’s chin resting on Bruce’s head. And they stay that way for as long as Bruce needs, because that’s what Bruce needed, so that’s what Tony gave him. There are times, even for Tony Stark, where plain human contact is better than words, anyway.

* * *

Inevitably, it had happened again – the world in danger, the Avengers had to spring into action. Afterwards, Bruce lies in a Hulk-shaped crater in what had been, a few hours before, a very busy street, groaning from the soreness of his _everything._ The stretching and shrinking of bones, muscles, and skin would be enough to lay _anything_ low, and the soreness of bruises and scrapes piled on top of that is a special hell that makes Bruce sick every time he wakes up to it. He feels like he’s had a brick building dropped on him – which, if Bruce remembers correctly from the haze of green-tinted Hulk memories buried with the Other Guy deep in his psyche, had actually been part of the problem. Bruce tries lifting his head but decides it isn’t worth it. Now that the danger has passed, one of his teammates will find him and help him. For now, Bruce does his best to cover his bare body with a minimum of movement.

It is Natasha, not Tony or Steve or anyone else, who is first to reach Bruce, toss him a spare pair of boxers, and offer him a petite hand to help him stand up. Natasha is a source of constant puzzlement to Bruce. She has better reason to fear him than anyone else, considering he had almost killed her in the bowels of the helicarrier – yet she is trying harder than anyone else in the team to look past the monster and at the person Bruce is (well, except for Tony, but Tony didn’t have to _try_ to see Bruce as a person – he simply _did._ ) Bruce had spent hours analyzing what had gone wrong, attempting to find the reason he’d lost control so it would never happen again. Bruce had been doing so well, a little over a year without an incident, and he had been sure he had the Other Guy under wraps. He agonized for weeks over it, finally coming to the conclusion that it had been a combination of his bubbling anger in the lab (which he had had under control, or so he thought) and the surprise of the engine explosion and sudden pain of falling through the floor. Bruce had apologized to Natasha endlessly in the few weeks following the business with Loki, and she had accepted his apology without fail but at a certain point told him that he sounded like a broken record and he ought to see if Tony could do anything about that, and Bruce had said that Tony wouldn’t _fix_ a broken record, he would replace it with high-definition audio files stored on a paper-thin touch-screen device capable of storing terabytes of information hooked up to a state-of-the-art surround-sound personal theater, or he would pay the band for a private concert, and Natasha had given him one of her rare laughs and left Bruce in the lab, smiling.

“Need anything, Banner?” Natasha says now in her typical terse, business-like tones.

“Ahhh,” Bruce groans, bending slightly as a sharp pain stabbed through his ribs. “No – no, I’m alright.” He hisses and wipes at a slowly-bleeding and miraculously shallow cut that extends from his left shoulder to his sternum. Natasha takes a small bottle of alcohol and a cotton ball from a small pouch somewhere and sets about dabbing at Bruce’s cuts and scrapes to clean the dust and blood out. That’s the great thing about Natasha – she doesn’t believe you when you say you’re fine and really aren’t.

Behind him Bruce can hear the tell-tale sound of the jets in Tony’s suit. Tony lands with a metallic thud and strides over to Bruce and Natasha.

“Doing okay, Hagrid?” says Tony, clapping an armored hand on Bruce’s shoulder. Tony is always so inexplicably upbeat after fighting, like Bruce’s polar opposite.

Bruce rubs his face exhaustedly with one hand. “How many civilians?”

“It’s hard to tell, Bruce, there’s a lot of damage to the area,” says Natasha diplomatically. “No one blames you, a lot more people would have died if you hadn’t been here.”

“But how many?”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Banner,” says Tony. There’s something the two of them aren’t telling him, and he knows what it is. He’d hurt someone, or a lot of people, and they didn’t want him to know how bad it was. “It was an accident. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.”

 _People died!_ Bruce wants to yell. _It doesn’t matter how many, I ruined people’s lives!_ Bruce couldn’t find the energy to fight anymore. Whenever the Hulk retreated, he takes Bruce’s anger with him for a little while. Bruce wants to get away, to go somewhere and let his tissues repair themselves and come to grips with whatever it is that he had done. He doesn’t want to talk, he wants to go and sit in his apartment alone with all the lights off to block out his searing headache – but he wouldn’t get far as he was, battered, half-naked, without shoes or any mode of transportation. So Bruce simply sighs and says, “Take me home.”

With a thump, Thor lands on Bruce’s other side.

“Clinton and Steven will return to us shortly,” he says, his booming voice almost physically concussive, like a bass speaker turned up much too high. It makes Bruce’s head pound. Well, at least Bruce hadn’t hurt one of the Avengers…

“We should wait for them, Bruce,” says Natasha softly.

“Fine,” says Bruce. He lets go of Tony, who had been supporting him, and lowers himself carefully onto the ground. Pulling a chunk of rubble under his head, Bruce lies down on the pavement, closes his eyes, shuts out the world, and promptly falls asleep.

When Clint and Steve show up, Clint nods in Bruce’s direction and said, “How long’s he been like that?”

“Oh, about ten minutes,” sighs Tony. “It’s astonishing how easily he can fall asleep if he wants to. I can’t sleep if there’s _one_ car alarm going off, let alone all of them in a five-mile radius.”

Tony and Steve lift Bruce carefully and prepare to get him into the S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft that has come to take them back to the Tower.

* * *

Tony hasn’t seen hide nor hair of Bruce in hours, which is concerning. He hadn’t shown up for the debriefing meeting Fury had called in the Blue Room, and his intercom had been off when Tony had tried calling it to see if he wanted to get Thai food with the rest of the team. Steve had convinced Tony to let Bruce rest, and they had gone without him, though Tony hadn’t wanted to. The point was that Bruce is upset and Tony can’t find him and Tony is scared, and Tony is not easily scared.

“JARVIS, locate Bruce Banner,” says Tony, scowling.

“Bruce Banner is in his apartment on Floor 33, sir.”

“Thanks.” Tony strides quickly to the elevator and navigates his way downstairs to Bruce’s apartment. Tony gives not a thought to Bruce’s privacy as he taps out the override pin on the pad next to Bruce’s door.

“Strike One,” says Bruce hoarsely as he hears Tony step through the door. The room was dark – curtains drawn, no lights on, not even a TV or a sound system or a light on a coffee machine, only the light spilling in from the open door to illuminate the place.

“You don’t get to play by the strike system, I own this whole building,” Tony blusters. He tries to flip on a lamp near the place where Bruce lies stiffly on the floor. “Why are you in here in the dark, Doc?”

“Thinking. What is so wrong about wanting to be alone to think sometimes?”

Bruce looks as if he were about to be sick. Maybe he was. Tony wastes no time finding the apartment’s circuit breaker and flipping the circuits back on. One or two lights flickered on, throwing soft light on Bruce’s features and making him flinch at the sudden change. He’d showered, and most of the cuts and bruises he’d had earlier had disappeared, thanks to the Hulk’s astonishing regenerative properties.

“Hey, sit up, I want to talk to you,” says Tony, squatting next to Bruce.

“What is there to talk about?” Bruce says bitterly, but he sits up anyway. “I killed people today, Tony. It’s that simple. The Hulk is a monster, full stop. I can’t control him, no one can.”

Tony puts a hand on the side of Bruce’s face, and somehow, it isn’t weird like it seemed in movies, like you’d imagine it to be. The thing about Tony is that he can just do things, and it isn’t weird, because Tony makes it alright.

“It was an accident,” he says. “It wasn’t the Hulk’s fault. You were thrown back from an explosion and yes, a couple of people died, but look. Those people that died? There would have been a lot more if the Hulk hadn’t stopped most of the blast. The Hulk isn’t a mindless beast, you know. He can make decisions. He can _think._ The Hulk is like a trapped animal – desperate, temporarily insane from his own fear and anger, but somewhere under all that is a person. Is _you,_ Bruce. The Hulk lashes out because you never could. So no, the Hulk can’t be controlled, but he can make a choice, and he made the choice to fight _with_ us. To save me. You don’t give him nearly enough credit, Bruce. And I, for one, _like_ him. Don’t be _afraid_ of him anymore, Bruce. You don’t have to be.”

Bruce doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t have to. To Tony’s eternal credit, he recognizes that now is a perfect time to shut up and leave Bruce to his thoughts. Tony stands and walks towards the door of Bruce’s apartment.

“No,” Bruce says, suddenly, standing. “Stay.”

Tony turns and looks back at Bruce. Something in the way Bruce is standing makes him look simultaneously like a five-year-old who has lost his mother and an old man who has seen too much in his long life.

“I wanna ask you one more thing,” Tony says, moving slowly to stand in front of Bruce. “If the Hulk was such a monster, then why did he help us? Why did he – why did _you_ – save me, when I was falling out of space?”

“Because, sometimes,” Bruce says slowly, “When you like someone enough – it bleeds through.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Tony leans in, places his hands on Bruce’s face, and kisses him. Bruce grabs first for Tony’s wrists, then his waist, slipping into the kiss that felt as if it had been brewing for months. One of Tony’s hands slips down to Bruce’s hip and pulls him closer. Bruce likes the tickle of Tony’s goatee on his face, the very faint taste of scotch on Tony’s tongue, and the feel of Tony’s muscles tensed up. Tony is surprised at how muscled and sinewy Bruce’s body feels – he always looked so soft, and folded up, and just – well, Tony hadn’t been expecting it, but it’s nice. Bruce’s heart rate monitor beeps warningly and with a small, frustrated noise Bruce takes his hands off Tony, hastily and clumsily removes the watch, and tosses it away from him. Tony laughs because this, of course, does not stop the beeping, since the watch has to be at least 150 yards away before it’s out of range. One of Bruce’s hands presses into the small of Tony’s back and the other buries itself in Tony’s hair.

“Mmf,” Tony groans. He _loves_ it when people play with his hair. Tony puts a hand on the back of Bruce’s neck and kisses him deeper. Kissing Bruce is different than kissing models or actresses or New York socialites. They kissed like they want something from you; and, of course, they did. They wanted money and fame and Tony has always been a great avenue towards getting both. But Bruce kisses like he’s experimenting, like he’s going to record observations and write a conclusion to sum up his thoughts, like he’s going to write a paper about the practical real-world applications of kissing you. The moment lasts only a little longer, until Bruce pulls away, their foreheads touching as Bruce looks down at his feet.

“What’s the matter?” Tony asks, watching Bruce closely.

“Nothing,” Bruce says, looking back up at Tony. “Nothing, at all.”

“Good, because I saved you some Thai,” Tony says, releasing him. “I got you that fried rice you like so much, with the eggs in it.”

“Thanks, Tony.”

And it’s that simple. All it was ever going to take with Bruce was someone who believed in him, who liked him, who might even love him. And he isn’t okay again, not yet, but it’s a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there you all go, I hope you enjoyed it! Sorry, Steve turned out a lot meaner than I meant him to, but i didn't really have the energy to fix it. He won't be that way in future fics, I promise. Thank you so very much to my beautiful betas - Anna, Heather, Aisu, and Bree! None of this would have been possible without you guys.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you all are enjoying yourselves! Personally, I think it gets better in the second half. Thanks very much to Heather for the title~


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